Need quick advice regarding outsourcing

A

Ancalagon

Honorary Master
Joined
Feb 23, 2010
Messages
18,207
Reaction score
3,678
Hey guys,

I need some advice quick. I developed a website for my company which is now live and in use. Owing to a resource shortage where I am (I am the only developer in a company of about 30, supposedly an IT company), they are looking to outsource the development of website upgrades. We have had a meeting with this company, and the guys seem competent, but now the CTO of my company has requested that I upload a copy of the website code for them to examine.

They have signed an NDA, but I still worry about doing this. Should I suggest to the CTO that they come here instead for a meeting, in which we can examine the code and I can explain it to them? I dont feel comfortable uploading a copy off site.

Am I being unnecessarily paranoid?
 
Thinking about it, it depends on what I provide. Just the website presentation layer, and user layer, there is nothing really business critical in there.

Not much that would be of use to someone else either.
 
Ancalagon said:
Hey guys,

I need some advice quick. I developed a website for my company which is now live and in use. Owing to a resource shortage where I am (I am the only developer in a company of about 30, supposedly an IT company), they are looking to outsource the development of website upgrades. We have had a meeting with this company, and the guys seem competent, but now the CTO of my company has requested that I upload a copy of the website code for them to examine.

They have signed an NDA, but I still worry about doing this. Should I suggest to the CTO that they come here instead for a meeting, in which we can examine the code and I can explain it to them? I dont feel comfortable uploading a copy off site.

Am I being unnecessarily paranoid?
Click to expand...

A NDA will not help you in most cases. If you have IP in the website then it's better to have them walk through code on premise. Once you outsource you will sit with the same problem. Whatever contracts you sign, make sure that it covers non-compete and ownership of material (surviving the termination of the contract). Best option is to have a the outsource party commit the code into your own version control (you can either use Atlassian Stash for selfhosting or Github).

If the company website is just content and does not have anything proprietary in it, I would actually pawn it off to the outsource company (who will then deal with marketing or whoever else is responsible for it in your business) - no reason to hold on to it if it is just content (just make sure that transactional logic/code remains your company's responsibility though)
 
It does proprietary code in it, but yeah, I'm not sure its that critical. Its not a transactional website in any case, and there is almost no business logic in the website. I'll provide them with the website and even the authentication module, but not the business logic layer (nor the stored procs).

EDIT:

Thanks guys.
 
Ancalagon said:
It does proprietary code in it, but yeah, I'm not sure its that critical. Its not a transactional website in any case, and there is almost no business logic in the website. I'll provide them with the website and even the authentication module, but not the business logic layer (nor the stored procs).
Click to expand...

Sometimes you just don't want to have that content-website-monkey on your back. If the site does not directly contribute to the bottom-line of the business and is just for marketing purposes and would have frequent content changes, rather pawn it off and focus on the business critical IT work. We do the same with blogs and auxiliary sites and outsourced to a number of really good overseas guys - managing 6 blogs for USD200/pm is unachievable locally.
 
MagicDude4Eva said:
Sometimes you just don't want to have that content-website-monkey on your back. If the site does not directly contribute to the bottom-line of the business and is just for marketing purposes and would have frequent content changes, rather pawn it off and focus on the business critical IT work. We do the same with blogs and auxiliary sites and outsourced to a number of really good overseas guys - managing 6 blogs for USD200/pm is unachievable locally.
Click to expand...

Its not just a content and marketing website, its more of a search engine that covers a specific sector, using data that we make available, that is not readily available. So, its not transactional in the sense that users do not update data, or insert data, but it is an important revenue generator for us.

The changes required are 99% front end changes, and the back end changes that are needed will more than likely be done by me.

EDIT: Users pay for subscriptions to use the site, it is not publicly available.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X